| Marjoe | |
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DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Howard Smith Sarah Kernochan |
| Produced by | Howard Smith Sarah Kernochan |
| Editing by | Lawrence Silk |
| Release date(s) | July 24, 1972 |
| Running time | 88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Marjoe is a 1972 American documentary film produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan about the life of evangelist Marjoe Gortner. It won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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Marjoe was a precocious child preacher with extraordinary talents, who was immensely popular in the American South. His parents earned large sums of money off him up until the point he outgrew his novelty. Marjoe rejoined the ministry as a young adult solely as a means of earning a living, and not as a believer; he spent the next several years using his fame and status as an evangelist to defraud a small fortune out of individuals both through tent revivals and televangelism.
Eventually, Gortner suffered a crisis of conscience and decided to renounce his ways, offering the documentary film crew unrestricted access to him during his final revival tour. The film contains scenes from genuine revival meetings showing Gortner preaching and praying for people, interspersed with footage of Gortner admitting on camera that he was a non-believer and revealing the tactics used by himself and other evangelists to manipulate people.[1]
At the time of the film's release he generated considerable press, but the movie was not shown widely in theaters in the Southern United States, based on the fears of the distributor over the outrage it would cause in the Bible Belt.[2][3]
A soundtrack was released by Warner Bros. Records, consisting of sermons and spoken word segments by Marjoe (from age 4), intermixed with songs. "Save All My Brothers", the film's theme song, was written by Sarah Kernochan and Joseph Brooks (who also arranged), and sung by Jerry Keller.[4]
Although released on VHS, the film had long been out of print and had deteriorated. In 2002 the negative and other elements were found in a vault in New York City.[5] Once the rights were secured, the film was restored with funds provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
On November 15, 2005, in New York City, the IFC Center showed Marjoe as the closing film in a series of documentaries called "Stranger Than Fiction". In their program they called it "a lost gem."[1]
The restored film has since been released on DVD.
The film won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1]
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